The new hate crime law that came into effect in Scotland on April Fools’ Day is so vague, complex, and impossible to interpret that Police Scotland – who are already underfunded and cannot afford to catch criminals effectively – have to now pay to hire “hate crime advisors”, whatever those are, to tell them what is and isn’t illegal.

Hamza Yousef, Scotland’s First Minister, says the new law will punish and reduce hate crime (even though hate crime is already falling in Scotland and there is no need for a new law) at the same time as protecting free speech.

Yousef must’ve felt slightly embarrassed when, amongst the unbelievable 3,000 complaints filed with police on the very first day, many of them were about him and a speech he made in 2020, where he is alleged to have said that there are “too many white people in Scotland“, which he quite clearly did not say.

I wonder if this will make him see that this new law is nothing other than an open invitation for snitches and troublemakers all over the place.

Also, inexplicably, unbelievably, the new law leaves out misogyny, i.e. women. It is said there will be a special new law for women, but it has been a long time coming, and why, I ask should they be excluded in the first place? I thought we were living in an age where we are supposed to talk about “people”?

The whole thing seems a rather nonsensical exercise that is going to cost an awful lot of money, produce a lot of confusion, and be an open invitation for people to take out their grudges against their neighbours, whilst wasting huge amounts of police time (it is estimated there will be well over 1 million complaints in the first 12 months) as more serious crimes go uninvestigated.

I really have little time for politicians who weigh up the balance of things and come out with results such as this.